Down to the Liar(30)

“As much as can be found without joining up,” I say, thinking back to the two-page report, typed and double-spaced, that Lily had emailed me that afternoon.

“You are considering joining a cult?” Dani doesn’t sound thrilled.

“It’s not really a cult. Or at least, not openly. It’s a leadership organization. Businesspeople pay to attend a series of leadership workshops that supposedly help them turn their mediocre lives into satisfied, happy ones. They advance to higher levels, bringing in new members to earn rewards and greater status.”

“It sounds like a cult.”

“It’s more like a pyramid scheme. It promises a big reward it never intends to deliver.”

“Which is?” Dani backs into a parking spot next to the firing range just as the horizon turns a dusky rose. I open my door and step out, stroking the hood of Dani’s Chevelle as I walk to the sidewalk. This car and I go way back.

“That’s what worries me,” I say. “What kind of ‘reward’ would convince someone with no priors to commit something as severe as grand larceny? Antolini had to know he’d get caught.”

Dani holds the door to the range open for me. Steve the gun-desk guy smiles at us. He’s seen us enough times now to recognize our faces.

I fork over my fake ID and Firearm Owner’s ID without his asking. Dani, he never ID’s. Possibly her black coat and perpetual glare are ID enough for Steve. They’d be enough for me to make her as a mob enforcer. And no one who wants continual use of his fingers cards a mob enforcer.

We pay our rental fees, grab safety gear, and head to the firing range. It’s busy, but not so busy that we have to wait for a booth. I lay the Beretta I always rent on the table so I can adjust my safety glasses before loading the gun. The glasses are too big and constantly slide down my nose. Dani never seems to have that problem. Somehow she looks just as lethal wearing plastic glasses and headphones as she does without.

She waits as I inspect the gun and load it. She’s a stickler for proper procedure. Always point the gun downrange. Always assume the gun is loaded. No coffee on the shooting line. Blah. Too many rules. But both she and Mike insisted I learn how to shoot in case another Petrov tries to use me as a body shield—which is hardly likely given that I turn down the dangerous cases these days, but as it’s probably the only thing they agree on, I took a note.

“There is something you are not telling me,” Dani says over the dull roar of the other shooters. She’s leaning against the wall of the booth, her arms crossed, looking relaxed. She always seems most at ease when there’s a gun in the room.

I fire a few rounds into the distant target. It’s hard to tell from the booth, but I may have managed a reliable group. It’s down by the lower left quadrant of the target, but it’s a group.

“Move your right foot back,” Dani says, her expression shrewd and assessing. “Lean more over your left.”

Dani didn’t exactly volunteer to teach me. She prefers to keep me completely separate from her day job as hired muscle for whatever criminal syndicate happens to be shorthanded. Training me in the fine art of killing people is too close to that part of her life for comfort, I guess. But I insisted. Mike gave me exactly one (totally unnecessary) driving lesson during which I nearly booted him from the car for stomping on an imaginary brake pedal on the passenger-side floor every time I rounded a corner. I figured that subjecting myself to his teaching style while I was in possession of a loaded weapon was not the best way to stay out of prison.

Besides, I like being around Dani. She doesn’t push me to be something I’m not. She doesn’t judge me, as long as I’m not acting stupid. And she doesn’t need protecting. I can just be with her. No expectations, no apologies, no guilt. She is to me what a gun is to her—I’m most at ease when she’s in the room.

She arches an eyebrow, still waiting for me to spill my secrets. I adjust my stance and my aim. “I’ll tell you later,” I say, because hell if I’m shouting about my mom issues at the top of my lungs.

I take a few more shots, but they end up hitting the same place on the target. Dani leans forward and fixes my grip on the gun, her movements patient but firm, her fingers warm against mine.

“Holding it like this feels clunky,” I say.

“It applies rearward pressure to counteract the forward pressure of your shooting hand. Try again.”

I do as told, and this time my shots end up in the lower right quadrant of the target.